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\Reprinted from LiPPiNCOTx'i; Magazine, April, ig02\ 

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ERMAN INFLUENCE IN AMERICA 

By y° G. Kosengarten 

Author of " The German Soldier in the Wars of the United States,'" ete. 



RECENT events show a strong and increasing mutual interest 
between Germany and the United States, and this may well 
renew inquiry and suggest a better knowledge of the early rela- 
tions of the two countries. As early as 1670 the first German that set 
foot in Carolina, John Lederer, made a tour of exploration under the 
direction of Governor Sir William Berkeley, of Virginia. Once a 
Franciscan monk, Lederer was a man of learning; his journal, written 
in Latin, was translated by Sir William Talbot, Governor of Maryland, 
who speaks highly of his literary attainments. His book is now a very 
rare one, and copies fetch a high price among early Americana, but it 
has been reproduced in a variety of editions, among others by Force 
in his tracts, and it is now easily accessible in all American collections. 

Of the Germans in Pennsylvania much has been written and printed 
of late, yet there must still remain in the archives of German churches 
more of the correspondence largely printed in the " Hallesche Nach- 
richten," through which the tide of German emigration was for many 
years directed to Pennsylvania. New York had discouraged it by 
harsh treatment of the early emigrants, but Maryland and Virginia 
and the Carolinas and Georgia all benefited by the large number of 
Germans who settled within their borders. To Louisiana and the vast 
territory then known by that name Law's Mississippi scheme brought, 
it has been estimated, more than seventeen thousand Germans, who 
settled in that region as far north as the present State of Illinois. 

In the old French war, the Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763, 
Great Brita,in organized the Loyal American Regiment, to consist of four 
battalions each of one thousand men, principally the German settlers 
in America, officered by foreign Protestants. That regiment still exists 




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2 German Influc^nce in America 

/ and is known as the Sixtieth, or King's Ro3'al Rifle Corps; it fought J 
at Louisburg and Crown Point and Ticonderoga, at Fort Duquesne 
and under Wolfe at Quebec, where it won the motto " Celer et Audax," 
which it still wears; it took part in the battles of Martinique and 
Havana, and later during the American War of Independence at Sa- 
vannah, Mobile, Hobkirk's Hill, Guilford, and Yorktown; among its 
oflRcers were men afterwards distinguished both in the mother country 
and in the later history of the American Republic. 

During the ante-Revolutionary period between 1745 and 1770 more 
than fifty clergymen, educated in Germany, came to this country. The 
Harvard professors of that day spoke with admiration of the thorough 
mastery of the Latin language shown by these Germans in speaking ,' 
and writing. One of their number. Dr. Kuntze, long the pastor of the 
German Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, was the founder of Hebrew ' 
and Oriental instruction in this country. 

The Muhlenbergs were educated at Halle, and long maintained a 
close correspondence with their old school and mission-house, securing 
there new assistants in their great task of providing educated clergymen 
for the large and growing German population of the Middle and 
Southern colonies. 

Naturally the events of the American War of Independence were 
closely followed in Germany. Schlozer's " Briefwechsel," in ten vol- 
umes, 1776-1783, and his " Staats Anzeigen," a continuation in eigh- 
teen volumes, contained many papers of interest relating to the struggle 
between Great Britain and her colonies ; families supplied letters and 
journals of their sons serving in this country, and both sides were fairly 
represented in the prompt reproduction of state papers and official 
reports. The Frankfort Neueste Staatsbegehenheiten, Reimer's Ameri- 
kanische Archiv, and other journals gave their German readers a cur- 
rent knowledge of the events in which so many of the German settlers 
of this country were taking an active part. German maps of battles ^ 
and sieges and German portraits of American heroes and worthies were / 
printed in large numbers to meet the demand and to-day form part of / 
every collection of Americana. The war over, many of the officers who 
had served here published their accounts : Schopf 's " Travels," Ochs's 
and Ewald's books, full of their personal experiences, Wangenheim's 
" Description of American Trees," even a comedy, " The Hessian i— 

) 

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German Influence in America 3 

Officer in America," and that charming book, Madame von Kiedesel's 
" Berufsreise in Amerika," were onl}' a few of the results of personal 
experiences. The German archives are full of the personal and official < 
correspondence of German officers, for their families were directed to I 
send to them all letters for preservation, and many of them have since 
been printed. 

Eecently the Emperor of Germany spoke of the good record of the 
German regiments that had served in the War of American Indepen- 
dence. The Colonel of one of these very regiments gave its officers a 
lecture on the part it had played in the American Revolutionary War. 
At the recent anniversary of the German Gymnasium at Pyritz the 
Rector read the diary of one of its former students during his service 
with his regiment here. German novels dealing with the events of the 
American Revolution have become quite numerous. A recent trans- 
lation of E. J. Lowell's capital book on " The Hessians in America," 
has been published by an officer of the German general staff, — a fitting 
tribute to a capital example of American historical research. To 
Lowell's suggestion is due much of the reprinting of the numerous 
diaries and journals of the German officers who served here. Germans ; 
too who served here during the Civil War, Colonel Heros Von Borcke i 
and Estvan on the Southern side, and a much longer list of those who 
were in the Northern army, have published books on the war. While 
Von Hoist represents and typifies the German student and teacher in 
a succession of works dealing with our constitutional history, there is 
hardly an event or a question in recent American history, social, eco- 
nomical, or political, that has not been discussed by Germans, fully 
masters of all that is of interest in our contemporary history. 

A country that has New York, with more Germans than in any 
German city except Berlin, and a larger German population scattered 
throughout its length and breadth than any single German state 
or all its colonies put together, cannot fail to keep in close toiich 
with the mother country and to influence and to be influenced by all 
the movements, financial and political, that have a common interest 
for the people of both countries. The literature of the two countries 
is largely common to the people there and here, and a German who 
comes to Harvard as a professor follows the good example set by Lieber 
and Vethake and Seidensticker here in Philadelphia, and may well 
find the same hearty welcome. 



4 German Influence in America 

The interdependence of two nations with so much in common in i 
their past and so many ties in the present cannot fail to be an important (. 
factor in the future. Allied for the industrial development of the <. 
parts of the world hitherto remote from commerce, and united in many 
matters of education and training, Germany and America may well 
move forward in harmony, each maintaining all of its independence 
of method and thought and action, yet both gaining strength from a 
better understanding and mutual self-help by which each may supple- 
ment the needs of the other. 



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